1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to disk drive devices, and more particularly to a method and apparatus for using non-recording tracks to increase disk drive performance in a frequent access area.
2. Prior Art
As the recording density increases in disk drive devices employing magnetic disks as recording media, the track pitch becomes narrower, and higher-precision seek control is needed. In addition, so-called off-track recording inhibition processing, which inhibits recording when the position of the head is a predetermined distance from the track center, is carried out to maintain reliability.
The OS (operating system) executed in information processing apparatus using this type of disk drive device also employs a predetermined area as a file system management area such as a FAT (file allocation table). The OS records information such as file attributes in this type of management area, and accesses it frequently, whenever a file is accessed.
There are cases, however, in which the seek performance of a disk drive device is degraded when higher-precision seek control or off-track write inhibition processing is implemented as described above. The impact of the degradation of the performance of frequently accessed areas such as the above-mentioned file system management area on the performance of the entire drive is particularly great.
The present invention addresses the problem described above, with the object of providing a disk drive device, a fabrication method thereof, a seek control method for a disk drive device, and a disk drive control device that can improve the access performance of frequently accessed areas such as the file system management area, the OS storage area, and storage areas of moving-picture files, contributing to an improvement in performance of the entire disk drive device, while maintaining reliability.
The present invention provides a disk drive device comprising a disk-shaped recording medium, having a recording surface on which a plurality of tracks having a predetermined width in a radial direction are defined, said recording surface including a first area wherein a plurality of recording tracks and a plurality of non-recording tracks are located so as to form an alternating pattern along the radial direction of the recording surface.
An embodiment of the present invention further comprises a transducer to record information on the disk-shaped recording medium; a position error detector element to detect position error relative to a target track to be recorded on; an actuator to move the transducer to the target track according to the position error; an end-of-seek detector, wherein when the transducer is moved to a target track inside the predetermined area the end-of-seek detector determines an end of seek based on whether the position error is less than a first threshold, and when the transducer is moved to a target track outside the predetermined area, the end-of-seek detector determines an end of seek based on whether the position error is less than a second threshold, wherein the second threshold is less than the first threshold; and a write inhibitor, wherein when the target track is inside the predetermined area the write inhibitor inhibits a write operation when the position error is greater than a first threshold, and when the target track is outside the predetermined area the write inhibitor inhibits a write operation when the position error is greater than a second threshold, wherein the second threshold is less than the first threshold.